


Become Like They Are

by akire_yta



Category: Bandom, Disney RPF, Skippy - Fandom
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, blta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Jonas Brothers are ghosts.  The Academy Is… come to stay in the house they haunt as they prepare for their next album.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Become Like They Are

**Author's Note:**

> Character death warning for the fact that the JoBros are ghosts
> 
> Huge thanks to ink-on-the-page for the handholding, meta-listening, and scene-breaking help. Title from ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ by Blue Oyster Cult. I have UK spelling, so sorry, but not even Kevin’s pretty curls could get me to drop the 'u' from colour.
> 
> For the skipathon, for kira_snugz who asked for “paranormal fic! ghosts or fairies and things unexpected. humor is a bonus.” This is an extra story for this prompt, since the first response was so long and drawn out (and painful). But once again, I failed at humour ~hides~

Being dead sucked. Kevin sighed and tried to amuse himself by making the curtains billow. After a few years of ghosthood, he thought that he’d have it down. But mostly, Kevin was bored. Bored, bored, bored.

He drifted through the floor and down into the kitchen. Nick was there, hovering inches above the floorboards.

“What are you doing?” Kevin asked.

Nick waved his hand. “Shh, me and Joe are having a mouse race. Come on, blackie!” He laughed, floating up to the ceiling as a small, dark mouse skittered along the skirting board and disappeared under the sink. “Yay, that’s it.” He dove into the sink and disappeared. From the basement, he heard cheering and yelling as the mice apparently finished in a dead heat.

Kevin wished he still had eyes so he could roll them. He drifted down the hall and settled into the bay window. Outside, it was a tantalizingly beautiful day, bright blue skies with the sun shining high. He stared at it longingly. He wished he could go outside.

The slam of a car door dragged his attention back to the present. He watched in shock as a bunch of men got out of a car parked in their overgrown drive. “Awesome, man, perfect!” one cried out.

His friend curled his lip. “It’s a dump.”

“No,” the first one corrected. “It is in fact cheap. And since we are poor, it makes it perfect.”

Kevin stared in horror as a truck pulled up to the curb. Someone was moving in. He flew through the house, crashing into the basement so hard he dipped under the concrete foundations briefly. He popped up, like a cork in water. “There’s someone moving in!” he told his brothers. They scoffed at him. They had their mice corralled in a corner. The two little rodents were staring at the apparitions floating above them with wide-eyed, whisker-twitching fear. Kevin could sympathize right now. “Seriously, new people.”

“No one would live here,” Nick began. He was cut off by the sounds of boots on the floorboards over their heads, the sound of voices.

Joe brightened, almost sparkling in the gloom of the basement. “People!” he cried. He floated up.

Kevin reached out and grabbed him, the memory of flesh tingling as he made contact with Joe’s spectral form. “Don’t. Remember last time we had people, and you just bumbled in there?”

Nick tipped his head to the side. “She ran pretty fast for an old lady.”

Kevin nodded. “We are not having a repeat.” He told them. “Come on.”

The three ghosts drifted cautiously up into the gap between the walls, listening to the conversation in the corridors.

“No, set the drum kit up over there.”

“How old is this wiring? Can it handle an amp, do you think?”

“I’ve claimed the big bedroom, so don’t you dare try!”

“You can’t claim shotgun on a bedroom, William!”

“Can, did, have.” Kevin risked letting his head float through the wall, sneaking a peek. There were maybe half a dozen guys and enough boxes, crates and bags to support a small circus. It was barely organized chaos, but Kevin’s eyes were drawn like magnets to the stack of guitar cases leaning against a wall.

He pulled himself back into the wall cavity. “Guys, they’ve got _guitars_.”

Joe and Nick sighed longingly in unison.

“Did you hear something?”

The three ghosts froze. The words sounded like they came from just the other side of the drywall. If Kevin still breathed, he would have gasped as somebody started tap-tap-tapping along the wall.

“Uh, uh, Mike. Feigning audible hallucinations will not get you out of moving boxes. Come along.”

~//~

Lurking in the walls, it didn’t take them long to figure out who the new tenants were. There were five of them, plus a small rotating cadre of friends and hangers on who came and went. They were a band, and they had rented the house to write their new album.

They were also suffering from writer’s block.

Kevin floated down to join Nick on his perch at the bottom of the stairs. From there, they could see half the band racing each other on the X-Box in one room, and across the entry hall, the other half of the band locked in a game of Sudden Death Origami.

Nick shook his head sadly. “They really are blocked, aren’t they?”

Kevin could only nod in silent agreement as Sisky crossed the line first in the X-Box tournament and commenced an elaborate victory dance that somehow involved waving his butt in the Butcher’s face.

Joe’s head appeared through the floorboards beneath his feet. “Do you know what we should do,” he said, rising up to stand before his brothers. Kevin and Nick didn’t even flinch, too used to Joe’s dramatic ghostly entrances. “We should, like, you know, _inspire_ them.”

Nick looked unimpressed. “We’re _ghosts_ , Joe,” he said matter-of-factly. “We can’t even pick up a cup. We walk through walls. We’ve been stuck in this house for whoever knows how long. We’re dead.” He finished firmly. “How can we inspire them?”

Joe shrugged. “Got a better idea?”

Kevin frowned. “Kid’s got a point.”

Nick was wearing his ‘I’m surrounded by morons and we’re related’ face. “Okay,” he said at last, bowing to the inevitable. “What did you have in mind?”

~//~

Joe’s first few ideas didn’t go so well. They were hampered by the fact that not everyone could see or hear ghosts – if they knew that ghosts just didn’t exist, then their minds just edited Joe, Nick, and Kevin out of the scene.

Even if Joe was standing right in front of them, screaming and making faces. Sisky just calmly went on brushing his teeth, moving _through_ Joe to spit into the sink.

Kevin patted his brothers’ arm sympathetically as Sisky left the bathroom. “It was a nice try,” he offered.

Joe looked slightly queasy – walking through a human was a lot different than walking through a wall. For one thing, there were a lot more squishy, bloody bits. “I’m not giving up yet,” Joe managed. “Just give me a minute.”

The Butcher could see them. They found this out after he walked in on them hanging out in the kitchen. Kevin may have been floating four feet above the kitchen table at the time, but floating, he always maintained, was one of the few perks of ghosthood. They knew the Butcher had seen them. The way he went dead white, then turned and ran screaming out into the night clued them in.

The three brothers crowded against the window and watched the rest of the band chase him around for an hour, finally tackling him to the grass and pouring a fifth of vodka down his throat to calm him down. “That could have gone better,” Nick observed.

“Uh huh,” Joe and Kevin said in unison.

~//~

Kevin was alone in the attic. Long ago, they had unconsciously cornered off spaces that were solely for each of them, private little corners for when the burden of being trapped for eternity got too much. The attic was tiny, dusty and poky, with cobwebs strung across the bare wooden rafters, but it was his.

He was curled up, hugging his knees to his chest, letting himself just float. Every time he brushed against the ceiling, he felt that static against his spectral skin, the first warning of the invisible field that kept them locked inside the house. He fell into a rhythm, one two three, buzz, one two three, buzz.

Slowly, the sound of guitar chords trickled into his consciousness. He named them silently, F, G, C, counting them out on his beat, two, three, four.

Without meaning to, he began to drift down, through the ceiling into the bedroom beneath the attic. He came through the ceiling head first, and hung there, watching as Mike repeated the simple chord progression over and over, ending each time on a different chord – Amin, E. His mouth was a hard, thin line, frustration clear in the set of his shoulders and the furrow in his brow.

Mike sighed, rubbing tiredly across the bridge of his nose. “Come on, what should come next?” He murmured to himself, half-humming the words, and Kevin recognized the snatch of lyric William had written over lunch and then tossed away in disgust.

He hit a sour note, and swore.

Kevin didn’t mean it, but he couldn’t help but blurt it out. “Try a D-chord.”

Mike flew up from his seat, his guitar hanging limping from his fingers as he stared, open-mouthed, up at Kevin hanging upside down through the ceiling.

Kevin realized how this must look, and covered his mouth with his hand. “I am so, so sorry,” he babbled, drifting down to the floor until he was able to fake standing normally. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, I mean, I…”

Mike started to laugh.

Kevin stared. “What’s so funny?”

Mike was bending over, he was laughing so hard. He pointed at Kevin. “I’ve officially gone crazy. There is a see-through man giving me chord suggestions.” He straightened up, wiping his eyes with his free hand. “At least I have good taste in hallucinations,” he added, openly looking Kevin over.

Kevin stared in open-mouthed affront. “Hey, I may be dead but that’s no reason to be insulting.”

Mike stopped laughing. “Wait,” he said slowly. “The Butcher was right? This place is haunted?” He shook his head, fear creeping into his eyes. “No, no,” he babbled, stepped back until he was up against the wall. “You can’t be a ghost.”

Kevin made a face. For some reason, it mattered that Mike understood. “Does this feel like a hallucination?” He leaned over and quickly ran his hands up and down Mike’s arms. Mike shivered, his fingers reflexively tightening around the neck of the guitar. The strings _plinged_ softly under the pressure.

“Wow,” he said softly.

Kevin was staring at the guitar. “Is that a Takamine?” he asked reverentially, staring at it.

Mike looked down at the guitar, then back up at him. “You know about guitars?”

Kevin nodded sadly. “I…I used to play, well,” he held up his spectral fingers. “Before.”

Mike was staring at Kevin’s face. His expression softened, colour coming back into his cheeks. “A D chord, you reckon?” he said at last. “Which one?”

Kevin tried to control his grin as Mike sat back down and settled his fingers over the strings. Kevin floated over to the floor by Mike’s feet and watched him play with hungry eyes.

~//~

William could mostly hear them but rarely saw them. He described Nick as a shimmering fairy light in the dark, and declared he was going to write a song in Nick’s honour. If Nick could touch corporeal things, Kevin might have worried that he’d strangle William in his sleep. Mostly, he just took to surprising William in the bathroom as revenge. Sisky was annoyed he couldn’t see or hear anything, and the Butcher still refused to be alone in the house with them.

Mike could see them the best. “You know,” he told Kevin as he finished playing the latest song they had completed. “You’re looking almost solid today.”

Kevin watched the guitar as Mike set it aside, pulling his eyes over to Mike with an effort. “I don’t think it works like that,” he said sadly.

Mike paused. “Can I…can I ask what happened to you guys?”

Kevin shrugged. “We don’t know. There’s this blank spot, in our memories.” He looked away. “Probably for the best. Not sure if I really want to remember…y’know.”

Mike was rubbing his hands, tense from hours of playing. “But don’t you need to know, if you’re to figure out how you’re meant to move on.”

Kevin felt himself drifting through the floor, and pulled himself back with an effort of will. “I’m not sure we’re meant to move on. Maybe this is it?”

Mike was staring at him. “Stuck in this old house forever with your brothers?” he asked disbelievingly. “That’s it.”

“It could be worse,” Kevin told.

“How?” Mike scoffed.

Kevin smiled softly. “I could be stuck here forever without them.”

~//~

The three of them were floating around the living room, watching Sisky kick William’s butt at Xbox when Mike came in, carrying a guitar case.

“New guitar, Carden?” Sisky asked, grimacing at the screen as he contorted his body in a futile attempt to make his on-screen car go faster.

Mike shook his head, heading over to the old fireplace. “Old, bought it down the pawn shop. Hey guys,” he added, turning to the ghosts. “Can I light a fire in here without burning the whole place down?”

“I think so,” Joe said at the same time Sisky asked “Why do you want a fire, it’s, like 70 degrees out.”

Mike shook his head. “Wow, overlap. As for why, you’ll see.”

The game was abandoned in favour of watching Mike build a fire in the grate, the whole band turning the hunt for kindling into a kind of treasure quest. William even produced out of nowhere a pirate hat for the occasion.

“Okay,” William said, the hat at a rakish angle as he sat back. “We have fire. Now what.”

Mike unlatched the case and produced a beautiful acoustic guitar. He held it on his lap, carefully tuning each string until it was producing a sweet, clear sound. Kevin’s fingers itched to be able to hold it. “Now,” he said, finally addressing William’s questions. “We take this guitar, and we kill it.”

There was stunned silence. “Say what?”

Mike made a sheepish face. “I was doing some reading, and there’s lots of history about kings and shit having stuff killed, so they could have things in the afterlife.” He waved his hand towards Kevin. “I was thinking, we could kill a guitar, and it would give them a ghost guitar to play.”

Sisky massaged his temples. “You want to destroy that beautiful, beautiful guitar so your imaginary friends can play strum-along?”

In response, Mike lifted it over his head and shattered it on the edge of the fireplace, shoving the fractured bits into the flames. “Think that was a violent enough death?”

Sisky had his hands over his eyes. “I can’t watch, it’s too brutal.”

Kevin was feeling dizzy. He reached out blindly, latching on to his brothers with each hand. There was a sensation of a strong wind for a brief moment, and then everything went back to normal.

“What happened?” Mike asked. “You guys went all flickery.”

None of the brothers spoke. They were staring in rapture at the faintly glowing ghost of the guitar resting neatly in the open guitar case. Moving slowly, half-expecting it to vanish at any moment, Kevin drifted down and carefully pulled the ghost-guitar onto his lap.

The strings sounded as sweet as they had when it had been a living guitar. He strummed the open chord, then began picking out the pattern of the last song the band had written, tentative at first but more confidently as his fingers remembered the skill he had when he had been alive.

He finished the song to a round of applause from those who could hear him. He looked up at Mike, who was beaming with smug pride. “If I could hug you right now, I would, you know that.”

Mike nodded. “Glad you like it.”

William stood up, tossing his hat aside carelessly. It flew through Nick, who yelped in protest. “I shall help you, my noble ghostly friend. Come here, Mikey, and take your hug like a man.”

Kevin hugged the guitar close, listening to the laughter shake the strings as William chased Mike around the room.

~//~

Kevin sat forlornly on the windowsill as they finished packing away their instruments. As their stuff was piled onto the truck, the house began to echo again, the silence rushing in to fill empty rooms.

Mike cleared his throat, and Kevin looked up. “I’m going to miss you,” he said awkwardly.

“Me too.”

Mike scuffed at the floorboards with the toe of his shoe. “Are you sure you can’t leave the house?”

Kevin nodded. “This is our house, and we haunt it. The end.”

Mike sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Thanks for…everything. Helping with the album, you know.”

Kevin managed a weak smile. “And thank you for my guitar.” The ashes of the fire were safely hidden in the attic, locking the spirit of the guitar to the house, to Kevin.

“Mike!” Sisky yelled. “Come on, we’ve got to go!”

Mike took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He held out his fist.

Kevin carefully knocked his own against it, his knuckles barely grazing Mike’s. Mike shivered nonetheless. “Bye.”

The front door closed, the truck pulled away, and the silence was complete.

Joe and Nick materialized on either side of him, bunched up close. “You okay?” Nick asked.

Kevin floated towards the ceiling. “I’ll be in the attic.”

~//~

Time passed in long-drawn out days. They still raced their mice and watched the world pass by outside, but now they also sat in the middle of the empty living room, where the Xbox used to be, and wrote songs that no living person was ever likely to hear.

They had songs about stupid boys with pirate hats, and songs about playing tag through the walls. They wrote songs about falling in love and being left behind. They wrote songs about what they could remember of being alive.

Kevin was sitting on the bottom of the stairs, strumming his guitar, when he heard a key drag in the lock. He shrank back into the staircase, watching as the door swung open and a woman in a simple suit and sharp heels marched into the house.

“As per your instructions,” she was saying. “The house and garden are exactly as is.” She paused. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a builder or someone to take a look at the property?”

Kevin gasped as he heard a voice answer. “I’m sure. Is that everything?”

She shrugged. “That’s everything. Here you are, Mr. Carden.” She dropped the keys into his outstretched hand. “I hope you enjoy the property.”

She clicked out on those ridiculous heels. Mike closed the door behind him, smiling ridiculously as Kevin rose out of the stairwell. “Honey,” he said, arms flung wide. “I’m home.”


End file.
